Peter Schmuck's Orioles report card

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It took three days to get the offense moving in Kansas City, and when the Orioles finally put up an eight-spot Sunday, the Royals put up a nine. The week would have looked a lot different if the Orioles could have gotten one more big hit at the end of Sunday’s game. Orioles hitters combined for a .274 batting average last week and scored five runs per game. They had 60 hits, and 24 of them were for extra bases. That’s just fine, but the club needs the heart of the lineup to wake up and is getting production from Manny Machado, Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo in short spurts. The big bat last week was none other than reserve catcher Caleb Joseph, who led the club’s everyday players with a .524 average, 11 hits and six RBIs. Francisco Pena spelled him for one game and hit two home runs.

It took three days to get the offense moving in Kansas City, and when the Orioles finally put up an eight-spot Sunday, the Royals put up a nine. The week would have looked a lot different if the Orioles could have gotten one more big hit at the end of Sunday’s game. Orioles hitters combined for a .274 batting average last week and scored five runs per game. They had 60 hits, and 24 of them were for extra bases. That’s just fine, but the club needs the heart of the lineup to wake up and is getting production from Manny Machado, Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo in short spurts. The big bat last week was none other than reserve catcher Caleb Joseph, who led the club’s everyday players with a .524 average, 11 hits and six RBIs. Francisco Pena spelled him for one game and hit two home runs.

The Orioles were having a pretty good defensive week until a huge fundamental error in Sunday’s game against the Royals contributed to another one-run loss. It’s not often that you see Manny Machado pick up a sacrifice bunt and throw to an unoccupied base, but the infield signals got crossed up and his throw into center field allowed a run to score and set up another. Doesn’t matter whose fault it was. It was just one of those things that happened on just one of those weekends. It was only the second error by the Orioles all week and the O’s edged up to sixth in the majors in fielding percentage.

The Orioles were having a pretty good defensive week until a huge fundamental error in Sunday’s game against the Royals contributed to another one-run loss. It’s not often that you see Manny Machado pick up a sacrifice bunt and throw to an unoccupied base, but the infield signals got crossed up and his throw into center field allowed a run to score and set up another. Doesn’t matter whose fault it was. It was just one of those things that happened on just one of those weekends. It was only the second error by the Orioles all week and the O’s edged up to sixth in the majors in fielding percentage.

Every week of the regular season, columnist Peter Schmuck will grade the performance of the Orioles in five categories. The letter grades are not directly tied to any particular statistic, but are representative of a cumulative evaluation of everything – tangible or intangible – that falls under that particular category.